


My heart is playing hide and seek (wait and count to four)

by Mazarin240



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Adorable, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Developing Relationship, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Genderfluid Klaus Hargreeves, Good Sibling Ben Hargreeves, He/Him and They/Them Pronouns for Klaus Hargreeves, How Do I Tag, I'm Bad At Tagging, Idiots in Love, Klaus Hargreeves & David "Dave" Katz During Vietnam, Klaus Hargreeves Needs A Hug, Klaus Hargreeves-centric, M/M, Mutual Pining, Non-Linear Narrative, POV Klaus Hargreeves, Pansexual Klaus Hargreeves, References to Drugs, Softie David "Dave" Katz, This actually has sweet tags I'm so happy, Vietnam War, soft bois
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-25
Updated: 2021-02-25
Packaged: 2021-03-16 01:41:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,021
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29568357
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mazarin240/pseuds/Mazarin240
Summary: Blood is seeping through the bandage. Blood red and dark and thick. Blood that should be Klaus’; from a bullet wound that was Klaus’.And Dave had taken it for him.An icy hand clenches his heart and it doesn’t let go.XXXaka the author is an idiot and so are Klaus and Dave. Based on the prompt: A time Klaus and Dave fought.For EnKlave  Fest 2021.
Relationships: Ben Hargreeves & Klaus Hargreeves, Klaus Hargreeves/David "Dave" Katz
Comments: 12
Kudos: 38
Collections: EnKlave Fest 2021





	My heart is playing hide and seek (wait and count to four)

**Author's Note:**

> I can't ever write, but for the past six months I literally cannot write. Had MAJOR writer's block.  
> And my wips are screeching at me like Klaus' ghosts.  
> I therefore did the intelligent thing and signed up for EnKlave Fest in the hope that a deadline would force me to write.  
> And then I left it last minute.  
> And wrote it all in the car to big Tescos :)

_“Hey!”_

_It’s cold, so cold. The world is spinning, tumbling, falling in on itself in a disarray of colours cutting into one another like shards of glass and bleeding out, out, out onto the ground._

_“Hey, Klaus!”_

_He pulls his coat tighter around himself. The air turns to vapour as he breathes. He’s dizzy, so dizzy. He’s starting to think there may have been something mixed in those drugs (well, fuck you, for being right, Ben)._

_A hand grasps his shoulder, and he turns._

_“Yeah,” he says absently, forcing down bile and squinting, “yeah.”_

_The kid is surprisingly young, he thinks. A few years younger than Klaus, still in his teen years, perhaps, and hopelessly naïve, with his red face and trembling fists._

_“What- why did you never call? We had a great night!” he says. And he sounds sort of angry and fragile and broken and Klaus doesn’t really know what to do with that because Klaus is the worst sort of person to ever help or comfort anyone (who would ever want such a failure as help?). Besides, he doesn't even remember the kid's name._

_He knows how he must look. His clothes are tattered, his eyes are red and wild and he reeks. He knows that people still want him, because he’s good like that. So he lets out a manic laugh, and it comes out all wheezy and asthmatic, like an old man. “Baby," he says, “that’s just my charm.”_

_He should have expected the punch, really._

“Hey, Klaus?”

Klaus blows out a ring of pot smoke. The air is hot and humid and feels heavy against his skin. “Yeah,” he says. He glances over at Dave. Moonlight bathes half his face, outlining the beautiful contours of his cheekbones, the chapped lips that gave Klaus stolen kisses in the dead of the night, the weary creases in his forehead.

His eyes travel down to his right shoulder, where his shirt slips down. Blood is seeping through the bandage. Blood red and dark and thick. Blood that should be Klaus’, from a bullet wound that was _Klaus’_.

And Dave had taken it for him.

An icy hand clenches his heart and it doesn’t let go.

“You’ve haven’t talked to me all week.”

“Darling, that’s impossible,” he says, joint perched loosely in his fingers, “I talk all the time.”

There are bags under Dave’s eyes. It looks like he hasn’t sleeps in an eternity. Klaus wants to reach out and erase them, hold Dave and cradle him gently till his worries melt away. He doesn’t.

Dave scrubs his face tiredly with his left hand. “You know what I mean,” he answers, “You haven’t said a word to me personally. Hell, Klaus, you haven’t even look at me!”

Klaus grins obnoxiously, and takes another drag, “I’m looking at you right now, aren’t I?”

_“No, no,” Klaus is sixteen and his fingers are shaking not just because it’s been too long since his last high. “I need to go inside,” he says, punctuating each word with theatrical mimes, “My boyfriend lives here. Apartment twenty-seven. Top floor.”_

_The guard raises his eyebrows. His chin has thin bits of stubble growing, that unseemly mix of white and black hair. He smells like ashtrays. “I speak English, kid,” he says, “and I told you, he’s gone. Landlord finally got the guts to kick him out, probably.”_

_Klaus shakes his head. His heart thuds against his ribcage. “No, you don’t understand. He- he would have told me. He wouldn’t have just left.” His voice cracks, “I- He wouldn’t. He lov- he-”_

_The guard sighs, and opens the door to the apartment building, “Come in. You’re already drenched out there and it ain’t gonna stop raining any time soon. Besides, I have cheap beer and you look like you’re gonna need it.”_

_He stumbles back, into a puddle, and the water soaks through his shoes to his bare feet. “I’m fine,” he says, even though he’s not, “I’m fine- I- I should go.”_

_He takes three buses back to the academy. And he doesn’t cry. He doesn’t._

“I-,” Dave’s fists are clenched and his knuckles are white. Klaus knows it’s a habit of his whenever he’s stressed, and he knows, without even looking, that Dave will have made four crescent-shaped bruises on his palms for days later. “Don't bullshit me,” he says tensely, “I want the truth.”

“Dave,” Klaus says, and his tongue is so heavy in his mouth; it feels so wrong to hear such a beautiful name coming from such a dirty thing, “yeah, we were fun. I never really expected anything like that in, y’know, 1968 Vietnam.” He laughs, and it’s fake and shrill. “It was great. Lovely to pop your man cherry. But it’s done. Over. Poof! Go and find another guy to spend your days with. I’m sure there’s plenty for someone like you.”

Dave stares at him in that fierce intense Dave way of his. His lips are slightly parted, in a sort of half gape. “Someone like me? I- what does that even mean, Klaus?”

“It means,” Klaus answers, “that you should go and fine yourself a nice guy. A handsome doctor or lawyer or something. Listen to me, _I’m not worth it._ You don’t know me, and you’re going to regret ever getting involved.” He eyes fall on Dave’s shoulder again, to the dark dark red of the blood staining the fabric, staining his hands.

“I want _you_!”

Klaus laughs again, bitterly. “Nobody wants me, Davey.” His joint falls to the ground, and he puts it out with the heel of his sandal.

Dave backs away. His shoulders are trembling. For the first time Klaus sees an emotion he hasn’t seen on Dave before. Dave is _angry._ “No, you don’t want anyone, Klaus. This? This is all on you. None of it is your pathetic father, or your stupid ghosts,” he spits, and his eyes glisten, “ We all see ghosts. It’s just yours so happen to be real.” He turns around before he's done talking and begins to walk away, as though to hide his tears.

Klaus watches him stalk out into the night with a sinking feeling. His hand slips into his pocket and he pulls out a baggie of pills.

He swallows three dry and tells himself it’s for the best.

_“What about you, Klaus?” asks the rehab worker. She’s young and black and fashionable, with one knee crossed over the other and leaning forward, in an attentive posture. She’s wearing these adorable pastel blue earrings, that Klaus desperately wants, and he decides he’s gonna get his ears pierced as soon as he gets out of here._

_“Oh, y’know,” he stretches over his chair, and he can hear his back cracking satisfyingly, “I don’t have many people. Pretty difficult to hold down a stable relationship when you’re a drug addict. Although I could always make an exception.”_

_He winks at her, and she chuckles, shaking her head, “Well, I appreciate the offer, Klaus.”_

_He expects her to leave it at that, forget the question and move on – he wants that – but she persists. “Anyway, what do you mean by that exactly? What about being an addict limits you, in your opinion?”_

_“Hmm, I don’t know,” he says, pretending to think, “probably the addiction part of it.”_

_The girl opposite him snorts. He looks towards her, but he quickly catches sight of a ghost behind her whose throat is slit, blood dripping from his neck and pooling onto the floor, and he looks away before he retches._

_The rehab worker – Zoey, he read off of her name tag - rolls her eyes enduringly, “What about the addiction?”_

_He sighs, and chews on his nails. He can already feel himself craving. His foot taps the ground. “I don’t know, it mean you’re a mess. You can’t be held down. You constantly fail people,” at this, he glances at Ben, who’s watching him from the other end of the room, and feels hot shame burning in his chest, “Most put together, relationship-y type people want two-point-five kids, a white picket fence and a dog named Brownie; they don’t want me, they don’t want an addict. Hell, I’m pretty sure I’d sell my soul to the devil for two ounces of coke.”_

_“One ounce,” Ben corrects him._

_“One ounce,” he rectifies with an amused grin._

He’s on his back, gazing up at the stars. He likes to think of the sky as a great velvet blanket, sometimes, covering the earth, and someone has poked holes in it with a needle, revealing little tiny pockets of light.

He blows smoke up into the air. Dave hasn’t spoken to him in two days, and he didn’t think it would be so hard. Every inch of feels bruised. He yearns to curl up in Dave’s arms, bury his face in the crook of Dave’s neck and never leave, to smell Dave, his scent of vanilla and sweat and laughter and protect him from whatever ghosts he sees. He’s never wanted to be with anyone like wants to be with Dave.

But he remembers the bullet ripping through Dave’s shoulder, seeing Dave collapse in his arms and his kind eyes shine with forgiveness as Klaus weeps over his prone form.

“Hey, Klaus.”

 _Oh,_ he thinks, _it’s Dave._ His voice feels almost too familiar, sickly sweet like honey dribbling over Klaus’ lips and chin and down his throat into his lungs.

“Hey,” he manages to choke out.

He lays down beside him. “I’m sorry,” he says softly into Klaus’ ear.

“You’ve got nothing to be sorry for,” Klaus says quietly, “I’m an idiot.”

“Yeah, you are,” Dave says, and Klaus looks at him in surprise. His lips are creased in a gentle smile, and Klaus has to physically resist from curling up to him. “But so am I,” Dave continues, and he cups Klaus' jaw with his hand, leaving him paralysed, “Gee, I can be a real bastard, Klaus! I know you and I still I took everything at face value. I didn’t even consider you might be scared. And damn, after all the shit you've been through, 'course you are.”

Klaus scoffs. “I’m not scared. I’m just-”

“I know you’re scared that I’m gonna get hurt because of you. I know you’re scared of this new relationship. I know you’re terrified to learn that you love me… and I know you do. Because I know you.”

Klaus closes his eyes, “shit. _Shit,_ you’re right.”

Dave huffs a laugh. “If it makes you feel any better, I feel the same way. You’re reckless and it makes me feel like my mama when she sent me off. I’m constantly scared shitless that you’re going to hurt yourself. And you think you don’t deserve me but, baby, you have done so much for me. Before I met you, I couldn’t voice my own tastes in _music_. Now, look at me. I have a _boyfriend._ Not only that, but the best boyfriend to walk the whole goddam earth. For the first time I feel comfortable with myself and that’s because of you.” Dave's intense gaze is back again.

“Oh my god, _Dave_ , I am _so_ sorry to hear that about your musical tastes. Everyone deserves the right to express themselves. I’m here should you ever need me.” Klaus pats Dave’s hand, and Dave lets out another laugh, deeper, softer.

Klaus feels their fingers intertwine. He looks up at the velvet sky. “You know, I think that when we get out of here I want a white picket fence and a dog called-”

He lets out a muffled noise as Dave shuts him up with a kiss. Everything stills and he lays there frozen for a moment. And then the world melt away as he leans in and feels Dave’s warm body against his own, smells the vanilla and the sweat and the midnight promises and cradled wishes. It doesn’t matter if they’re caught, he realises, it doesn’t matter that they’re scared, or that they might die any day. They’re together right now and that’s all there is to it.

**Author's Note:**

> My boys will kill me someday.  
> Also Dave is so fucking hard to write as a gen z british woc.


End file.
